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IEEE Information TheorySociety Newsletter

Vol. 58, No. 1, March 2008 Editor: Daniela Tuninetti ISSN 1059-2362

Why were you first attracted to informationtheory? For me, it was my first course in infor-mation theory at MIT. On the one hand, thesubject is mathematically beautiful and seduc-tive--- who could resist the charm of a meas-ure of information that leads immediately tothe data processing theorem, to say nothing ofthe source and channel coding theorems? Onthe other hand, it has always held out thepromise of being useful in practice. Indeed, inthe 46 years since I took that first course, thispromise has been fulfilled in a large variety ofapplications.

Are you happy to have chosen information theory as yourprofession? For me, it has been a wonderful place to make acareer. It has offered the opportunity to contribute to manysignificant advances, both theoretical and practical. Just asimportant, it has always been a supportive and collegial com-munity, open to merit from whatever source, and as free ofpolitics as I can imagine. I believe that most of my long-timecolleagues feel much the same.

One of the foremost responsibilities of the officers of the IEEEInformation Theory Society is to do all that we can to keep thefield as inviting and rewarding as it has been in the past. Wecan't do the research, but we can try to assure that there aregood outlets for good work, and that the best work is appro-priately celebrated. We can't control individual behavior, butwe can try to ensure that the society continues to be welcom-ing and supportive to everyone who has something to con-tribute.

As far as I can see, although we must be eternally vigilant,our society is in pretty good shape. Our Transactions contin-ues to be one of the most prestigious IEEE journals, and togrow in size and scope. It attracts the best papers in informa-tion theory and cognate fields, and the best continue to be asgood as they have ever been. It continues to be blessed for themost part with excellent editors and conscientious reviewers.The length of the reviewing cycle remains a problem,

although it is has been improved somewhat inrecent years, and is perhaps less of a concernas more and more papers enjoy rapid dissem-ination via arXiv and other on-line means.

Our annual ISIT symposium continues toattract more people and papers every year,which is both good and problematic. Ofcourse we want the opportunity to see all ofour colleagues at least once a year, but thegreater numbers may make the ISIT appearmore difficult to navigate and less welcoming,especially to newer participants. There havebeen important initiatives for students in

recent ISITs, but more can be done. Smaller regional orfocused workshops are useful complements to the big annu-al meeting; but again, more could be done.

As in other IEEE societies, our membership numbers havebeen declining in recent years, probably due primarily to thegeneral availability of IEEE Xplore. There has been an ongoingdebate about how much we should be concerned about thisdecline in view of other metrics of vitality, such as ones basedon Transactions and ISIT papers. Our membership numbers donot significantly affect our finances, which are quite healthy.We will take any modest steps that we can to encourage mem-bership, but will probably not make it a high priority.

As always, there will be some special projects this year. We willbe making significant investments in our Web site. We will beconsidering a proposal to put all of our publications onto oneDVD, including conference records. Once again, we will be dis-cussing whether to convert this newsletter into a magazine.And other proposals are likely to bubble up during the year.

Please let me know if you ever have any comments or sug-gestions about how the IT Society is doing, at <[email protected]>. Everyone has a different perspective, and I wouldlike to hear yours. My greatest hope is that the society will beas congenial a home for you as it has been for me for thesemany years.

President’s ColumnDavid Forney

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IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter March 2008

IEEEInformation TheorySociety Newsletter

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter(USPS 360-350) is published quarterly by theInformation Theory Society of the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor,New York, NY 10016-5997.

Cost is $1.00 per member per year (includedin Society fee) for each member of theInformation Theory Society. Printed in theU.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York,NY and at additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEEInformation Theory Society Newsletter,IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854.

© 2008 IEEE. Information contained in thisnewsletter may be copied without permissionprovided that the copies are not made or dis-tributed for direct commercial advantage, andthe title of the publication and its date appear.

Table of ContentsPresident’s Column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

From the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Tribute to David Slepian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Triute to Sergio D. Servetto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

The Historian’s Column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Golomb’s Puzzle Column: Divisibilities in Numerical Triangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

IT Members Receive Prestigious Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

New IEEE Fellows as of January 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

First Annual School of Information Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Roland L. Dobrushin – A Scientist and a Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Workshop Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Amendments to the IT Constitution and Bylaws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Call for Nominations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

ArXiv Progress Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Golomb’s Puzzle Column: Pentomino Exclusion Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Guest Column: News from National Science Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Call for Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Conference Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

Dear IT society members,

I trust you all had a good start of the yearand of the spring semester. Before I giveyou a taste of what you will find in thisissue, let me welcome our new presidentDave Forney. Dave does not need any intro-duction, his excellent record of scientificworks and his dedication to our society iswell known to everybody. Our society is ingood and capable hands! Please join me incongratulating and welcoming Dave.

We sadly mark here the passing away ofDavid Slepian. His friend and co-authorJack Wolf remembers him with great affec-tion in his issue. You will also find the obit-uary for Sergio Servetto by his dear friendsJoao Barros and Andrea Goldsmith.

In this issue you will find our regularcolumns by our president Dave Forney, ourhistorian Anthony Ephremides, our creativepuzzle maker Sol Golomb, and NSF programmanager Sirin Tekinay. In addition you willfind the announcement of prestigious awardsrecently awarded to our society members, aswell as the list of newly elevated members toIEEE fellows. Congratulations to all of themon their achievements.

From the EditorDaniela Tuninetti

You will also find the report on the sympo-sium held on the occasion of Tor Helleseth’s60th birthday, a nice account on the life andwork of R. L. Dobrushin by Mark Bykhovsky,and an update on the activities of the studentcommittee. After reading the program for thefirst North America Summer School ofInformation Theory, I hope you will encour-age your students to attend. Past presidentsSteve McLaughlin and Dave Neuhoff havesummarized for us some recent changes toour Constitution and Bylaws.

If you made it all the way to the end of theissue, do not miss out the call for nominationsfor the 2008 IT awards (whose deadlines arefast approaching), the update on the numberof submissions to ArXiv.org, our latest call forpapers, and the conference calendar forincoming deadlines.

Please help to make the Newsletter as interest-ing and informative as possible by offeringsuggestions and contributing news. The dead-lines for the next few issues of the Newsletterare as follows:

Issue DeadlineMarch 2008 January 10, 2008June 2008 April 10, 2008September 2008 July 10, 2008December 2008 October 10, 2008

Electronic submission in Ascii, LaTeX andWord formats is encouraged. Potentialauthors should not worry about layoutand fonts of their contributions. OurIEEE professionals take care of formattingthe source files according to the IEEENewsletter style. Electronic photos andgraphs should be in high resolution andsent in as separate file.

I may be reached at the following address:

Daniela TuninettiDepartment of Electrical and ComputerEngineeringUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, M/C 154851 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL, 60607-7053, USAE-mail: [email protected]

Best regards,Daniela Tuninetti

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March 2008 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter

Tribute to David Slepian (June 30,1923-November 29, 2007)Jack K. Wolf

I first heard of the passing of David Slepian in anemail which I received from his long-time friendand colleague Henry Landau, which began:“Saddest news: Dave Slepian died last night.” Davewas truly a giant in our field. Newton is quoted ashaving said: "If I have seen further, it is by standingon the shoulders of giants." I know that many of ushave benefited from standing on Dave’s shoulders,but I have had one of the best perches.

David Slepian was born in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania on June 30, 1923, one of two sons ofRose Myerson Slepian (a schoolteacher) and JosephSlepian (a prominent scientist). His undergraduatestudies at the University of Michigan were inter-rupted by service in the U.S. Army in World War II. Upon dis-charge, he entered Harvard University where he received a Ph.D.in Physics in 1949.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University and theSorbonne, he joined the Mathematics Research Center at BellTelephone Laboratories, which was the birthplace and then thecenter of gravity for activities in information theory. This groupincluded Shannon, MacMillan, Hamming, as well as many otherluminaries of the field.

Early in his career he worked on a wide variety of mathematicalproblems, including switching theory. He even designed a NIKEwarhead. His initial work in communications theory was in the areaof detection, where he introduced the possibility of singular detec-tion. He was a pioneer in the field of algebraic coding theory with hisseminal 1956 paper “A Class of Binary Signaling Alphabets,” whichintroduced the mathematical structure of group codes. Billions ofproducts containing group codes are used in every country through-out the world today (e.g., cell phones, computers, iPods, etc.)

Again quoting Landau:

“Considered one of the principal architects of Information Theory, heoriginated, among other things, fundamental studies of Gaussian noise,algebraic coding and, with Jack Wolf, multi-user information theory. Hiswork on time and frequency decomposition led to advances in signal pro-cessing, encryption, number theory, and spectral estimation. He analyzedprolate spheroidal wave functions and delta modulation. His more than50 papers are models of clarity, insight, and virtuosity; in Henry Pollak'swords, Dave was the person you went to with a problem that was clearlytoo difficult for any one to do.”

A characteristic of Dave’s research was his choice of problems.They were always fundamental in nature, and his solutions pro-vided the paths for the rest of us to follow. To this day, researchersare still using Dave’s techniques as the foundation for their stud-ies. Andrew Odlyzko, a former member of the MathematicsResearch Center wrote to me that:

“Slepian's work on time- and band-limiting led to intensive investiga-tions of the prolate functions. Those turn up in a variety of context thatat first sight might seem surprising. For example, they are used in com-

puting distributions of eigenvalues of random matrices inmathematical physics, and through this connection linkto the distribution of zeros of the Riemann zeta functionand to attempts to prove the Riemann Hypothesis.”

Furthermore, Moshe Zakai of the Technion wrote:

“Slepian's work on zero crossings (BSTJ 1962) hadimportant applications in the theory of Banach spaces. J.P. Kahane (French Academy), Y. Gordon in our mathdepartment and others extended and applied it.”

To obtain a better understanding of the immense depthand breadth of Slepian’s research, one should consultthe list of Slepian’s publications.

In the 1970s, Dave shared his time between Bell Laboratories andthe University of Hawaii. It was there (i.e., in Hawaii) that I hadthe fantastic opportunity of collaborating with him. This collabo-ration was both intense and exciting. It took the form of phonecalls in the middle of the night and pauses during tennis rallies.The problem we eventually solved haunted us, since we didn’tknow whether the rate region that now bears our name wasachievable or not. We spent approximately an equal amount oftime trying to prove either result. The breakthrough came whenwe were listening to a lecture on the coset decomposition of groupcodes for the binary symmetric channel. This led to our solutionfor the binary symmetric source. The extension to more generalsources followed.

Dave received many honors and recognitions, including beingelected to three national academies: the American Academy of Artsand Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and theNational Academy of Sciences (of which his father was also amember). In 1974, he was chosen as the second Shannon Lecturerof the IEEE Information Theory Society (the first lecturer beingShannon). His lecture was entitled simply “On Bandwidth,” andwas based upon his studies (with Pollak and Landau) of prolatespheroidal wave functions.

David Tse commented:

“Sad news indeed. It's just a coincidence that the day I heard thenews I happened to be thinking about issues involving signalbandwidth. I then found his Shannon Lecture "On Bandwidth,"which I found very beautifully written. What struck me is thatthere is this intellectual honesty and seriousness about research ingeneral and about models in particular. How our research should bebased on relevant models. I hope our generation can continue thistradition.”

Other IEEE awards included: the 1973 Information TheoryPrize Paper Award (with Wolf), the 1981 Alexander GrahamBell Medal, and the 1984 Centennial Medal. He was electedFellow of both the IEEE and the Institute of MathematicalSciences. In 1982 he received SIAM’s John von Neumann lec-ture award for “contributions to the field of applied mathemat-ical sciences and for the effective communication of these ideas

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to the community.”

Dave took a short leave of absence from Bell Laboratories to takea position with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Hedescribed this experience to me as having been the captain of anL.M.D. When asked, he told me the initials stood for a LargeMahogany Desk.

Dave loved to travel, eat good food, speak French and play theoboe. Time spent with Dave was always memorable and lots of fun.

Dave is survived by his wife of 57 years, Janice Berek Slepian, whois an accomplished author of books for young people. They havethree grown children and four grandchildren.

Some time ago I was invited to lecture at a NATO Advance StudyInstitute on the subject of the Slepian-Wolf theorem. I began thelecture with a slide that read: “This talk is dedicated to DavidSlepian, who taught me all I know about information theory andMUCH, MUCH, MORE!!” I know of no better way to end thistribute.

Tribute to Sergio D. Servetto (18th January 1968 - 24th July 2007)Joao Barros and Andrea Goldsmith

It is hard to conceive that the life of one so full ofpassion and warmth could end so abruptly andunexpectedly. Our colleague and dear friend, SergioDaniel Servetto, passed away on July 24th, 2007, thesole victim of an accident in a private plane, whichhe was flying from Michigan to Ithaca, NY.

Since he had recently accepted a visiting appoint-ment at the University of Notre Dame in SouthBend, Indiana, Sergio decided to buy the plane sothat he could travel to Ithaca, NY, on a regular basisand spend more time with his wife, Viviana, andhis two young boys, Luciano and Alessandro, bywhom he is survived.

Among the remains of the aircraft, rescuers found his laptop com-puter and a paper notebook. During his last stop and while hisplane was being fueled, Sergio took notes of his last thoughtsabout the one research problem he could not stop thinking about:the multi-terminal source coding problem, in which two correlatedsources are encoded separately subject to distortion criteria. Forthe better part of the previous five years, Sergio had been strivingto solve this thirty-year-old open problem, a Herculean task thatwould ultimately consume most of his time and energy.

It is fair to say that the audacity and determination he showed inthis and all his endeavors as a scientist were already evidentthroughout his youth and childhood. Born in La Plata, Argentinaon January 18, 1968, Sergio grew up in a small town in Tierra delFuego, thousands of kilometers south of Buenos Aires. Soon afterhigh school, he left his family to study computer science at theUniversidad Nacional de La Plata. It was in La Plata that Sergiomet the love of his life, Viviana Sitz, with whom from that day onhe would share all the ups and downs of the ambitious path he hadset for himself. Deeply influenced by the works of BertrandRussell, Sergio was an avid reader, cultivating a wide scope ofinterests ranging from science to music, from politics to philoso-phy. Often troubled by the irrationality of human behavior, whichcolored the situation in which he saw his country submerged,Sergio believed unconditionally in the benign power of logicalthought and defended this credo vehemently.

While working for IBM in Buenos Aires, Sergio had the opportu-

nity to spend some time at their research labs inCalifornia and, after experiencing the research envi-ronment of the United States for the first time, hestarted dreaming of an international career as a sci-entist. In fact, it did not take him very long to giveup his comparatively well paid job as a programmerin order to enter graduate school abroad.

Sergio and Viviana left their Argentine country andculture in 1994 for a very different place, Urbana,Illinois. Sergio would later recall their years inUrbana as the happiest time of his life, not just for theintellectual vigor of the university and the warmth ofthe people, but also because his two sons were bornthere. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign, Sergio started his graduate work in ElectricalEngineering, for which he received a Master of Science degree. Forhis doctoral work Sergio turned his characteristic intensity to inter-disciplinary research, hence he moved to the department ofComputer Science to work with advisor Klara Nahrstedt. Sergio’sachievements as a graduate student were recognized with the inau-gural Ray Ozzie Fellowship for "outstanding graduate students inComputer Science" in 1998, and he graduated with his Ph.D. in May1999. His doctoral dissertation on "Compression and ReliableTransmission of Digital Image and Video Signals" received theDavid J. Kuck Outstanding Thesis Award. This work addressedsystem design to transmit real-time high-quality video over theInternet. His professors and many of his fellow students at UIUCshare vivid memories of his insatiable curiosity and thirst forknowledge, well documented by his hundreds of lecture noteswhich he retained throughout his career.

After two years as a first assistant at the Ecole PolytechniqueFédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in Fall 2001, Sergio wasappointed Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical andComputer Engineering of Cornell University. He was also a mem-ber of the fields of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science atCornell, and served on the University Faculty Senate since 2005. In2003 Sergio received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award for hisproposal to investigate “Fundamental Performance Limits ofLarge-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks.” This award recognizes tal-ented young faculty with financial support for their research andteaching activities.

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Sergio was an extremely eclectic member of the research communi-ty, contributing very actively to the diverse fields of information the-ory, signal processing and networking. Beyond his bold and creativetreatment of multi-terminal source coding, bearing a risk of failurenot many would dare to take while still in their tenure track years,Sergio co-authored high-impact papers on fundamental communi-cation limits of sensor networks, broadcast channels, image pro-cessing, time synchronization and distributed modulation, amongother themes. Recently, he had been working with his doctoral stu-dents on the control of spatial waves under communication con-straints, as well as on the detection and estimation of geometric sig-nals. The breadth and depth of Sergio’s research contributions werehighly unusual for a young faculty member. He was also writing atextbook on Digital Communications over Packet-SwitchedNetworks, which was to be published by Kluwer.

Sergio’s passion for excellence, boldness, and dedication inresearch was a true role model for his graduate students RonDabora, An-swol Hu, Yorgos Lilis, and Mingbo Zhao. Sergiocared deeply about their research and success and, in addition tobeing their advisor, was also a true mentor and friend. Sergio’slegacy as an advisor will live on through these four.

Sergio dedicated much time as a volunteer to the technical com-munity. He was a member of the editorial board of Foundationsand Trends in Networking and a guest editor of a special issue ofthe IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. He alsoserved on the technical program committees of various majorconferences (IEEE ISIT, Infocom, Globecom, ICC, SECON; ACMMobiCom, MobiHoc, SenSys), and presented tutorials at ACMMobiHoc 2004 and EWSN 2005.

Sergio was very involved in the IEEE Information Theory Society,in particular its student committee. Sergio expended boundlesstime and energy to help students – he was a founding member ofthe student committee, established its website, and took overchairing the committee during a particularly difficult time in hiscareer. At the time of his death Sergio was working to initiate a

winter school for students of Information Theory, which will beheld for the first time this spring, and be named in honor ofSergio.

The reaction of our community to Sergio's loss was overwhelmingby every measure. Many attended the tribute to his life held at the2007 Allerton Conference, and more than one hundred colleaguesand friends wrote entries in an on-line book of condolences,where he is remembered as a passionate scientist with great intel-ligence, energy, daring, and personal warmth.

No paragraph could give a better account of his life motto thanthe following passage by Theodore Roosevelt, which Sergio choseto put on the front page of his personal web page and which, ashis friend Prof. Terry Fine so rightly observed, ultimatelydescribes how Sergio saw himself:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how thestrong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done thembetter. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whoseface is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; whoerrs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms,the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the bestknows in the end the triumphs of high achievement; and who at the worst,if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall neverbe with those cold and timid souls who know neither defeat nor victory."

Sergio’s passion, boldness, and bravery as a researcher were aninspiration to many. Rather than shying away from challengingproblems, he embraced them, and threw himself into them withall his heart, soul, and intellect. He was also an amazing friend:dedicated, passionate, compassionate, and full of warmth. We aregrateful to Sergio for having given us so much of his warmth,spirit, and inspiration. We will never forget him, and he will liveforever in our memories and in our hearts.

A list of selected publications of Sergio Servetto can be found athttp://cn.ece.cornell.edu/publications/.

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Today I will attempt an excursion into the domain of philosophy.Since it will have a context of history, such an excursion is justi-fied in this column.

Most of us enter our professional career with a mix of ambition,timidity, and uncertainty. We aspire to leave our mark and wecannot comfortably assess our stature. Will we reach greatness?Will we have an impact? Will we simply cruise in the undistin-guished lanes of scientific traffic? The world is always changingand so is our field. As we ramp up into the highway of our careerwe feel exhilaration as we pick up speed and gain recognition, butwe also feel the pressure of the race and the fear of the crash.

A defining moment in our paths is when we come close to “icons”in our field. I remember the feelings of awe, pride, and shockwhen I was first spoken to by some of the giants in our field.People whose books I had studied and who held a place on apedestal in my imagination would take flesh and shape in front ofmy eyes. I do not want to name them but each one of us has gonethrough a similar experience albeit at varying degrees of intensi-ty and for different individuals or famous institutions.

Typically, we think of such icons in exaggerated terms of perfec-tion. If nothing else we need them as symbols to justify our ideal-ism and to motivate us to emulate them. Shannon Lecturers,Presidents of our Society, authors of papers that made an impacton our thinking, they are idols, and so are famous universities orthe inner “sancta” of major companies. I remember how I feltwhen I crossed the threshold of Bell Labs at Murray Hill in theearly seventies, or when I set foot at Princeton in 1967, or when Ispent my sabbatical leaves at MIT, ETH, and Berkeley. It was afeeling of achievement and personal elevation, loaded withweights of responsibility and anxiety. Of course there are someamongst us who either have supreme confidence or diminishedsensitivity and do not have an inkling of what I am talking about.From my experience, though, most of us have experienced similarfeelings and reactions when the icons and idols became reality.

And then, … boom! Gradually, those feelings weaken and oftenthey disappear. The process of “idol deconstruction” (English-speak for “Gotterdammerung”) commences. We start seeingcracks in the images of perfection. We see weaknesses in thegiants. People who contributed breakthrough ideas can makemistakes. People whom we admired as paragons of integrityengage in petty political fights. People who seemed strong, feelthreatened. Institutions that seemed to be scientific “valhallas”can be fields of conflict and discord. And, most incredibly, we our-selves all of a sudden rise to the status of icons for others. At leastsome of us do. They say that there are three stages in one’s life:during the first stage we believe in Santa Claus; in the secondphase we question, and cease to believe in, Santa Claus. And in

the third stage, we become SantaClaus ourselves. What is left afteryou become Shannon Lecturer?What lies beyond the accolades andthe awards we receive? All of a sud-den from junior faculty members oryoung engineers who seek to gainaccess to, and impress, our idols, webecome senior and accomplishedprofessionals, if not distinguishedand recognized achievers, whose favor is sought by our youngercolleagues.

The question is then: should this lead to disillusionment and dis-appointment? Should we feel “cheated” and turn into cynics?How shall we advise our students and younger colleagues? Isreality the negation of dreams?

These are hefty issues and I do not profess to have the rightanswers. I can offer some observations, however. So, Shannonwas an undisputed genius and left a major mark on the field.Yet, as the field advances his posthumous footprint diminishes.Maybe Galileo or Aristotle left bigger marks. They too areadmired and their accomplishments are recognized and regis-tered for centuries. But they too have by now a “museum” auraabout them. The world is moving on. What they have left arebuilding blocks of knowledge upon which others keep building.As Sergio Verdu noted in his Shannon Lecture, Fleisher’s lemmamay not be a lemma and may not be due to Fleisher!Nonetheless, it represents a correct mathematical statement. Asit has been said, people disappear and their works live for awhile after them.

Coming to grips with the realization of this relative meaning ofwhat our careers and accomplishments are, and what our lega-cy will be, is an important step in our development. Instead of acause for pessimism and depression, it can be turned around tobecome a source of a different, inner sort of strength; a strengththat is calmer and more mature. It can help us become moreobjective and detached. And we can confirm that having hadour idols was the right thing. It helped us grow, contribute, andbe useful. In the end, what does it matter if these idols were notperfect? Perfection has never been part of human nature. Theywere part of a magnificent show. Life is a stage and we all playthe roles we choose. So, this transformational experience is partof the drama. It has been played for millennia and the applauseinterrupts the show when we play well. Our theorems, ideas,and designs can be “class acts” and they will have an impact,small or large, as we pass on, so long as the human race contin-ues to exist and evolve. Actors take pleasure in being on thestage. We should, too.

The Historian’s ColumnAnthony Ephremides

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We will denote by C(n, k) the number of k-subsets of an n-set.(This is the familiar binomial coefficient often written as

(nk).)

Inductively, C(n, k) can be obtained from C(n, 0) = C(n, n) = 1for all integers n ≥ 0, and C(n + 1, k + 1) = C(n, k) + C(n, k + 1)

for all 0 ≤ k ≤ n, with C(n, k) = 0 if k < 0 or k > n.

Let s(n, k) denote the number of ways to partition an n-setinto k non-empty parts, for 1 ≤ k ≤ n. This “Stirling num-ber of the first kind” can be obtained inductively froms(n, 1) = s(n, n) = 1 for all integers n ≥ 1, ands(n + 1, k + 1) = (k + 1)s(n, k + 1) + s(n, k), with s(n, k) = 0 ifk < 1 or k > n.

Let S(n, k) denote the number of ways to form a permutationon n objects as a product of k disjoint cycles. This “Stirlingnumber of the second kind” can be obtained inductivelyfrom S(n, 1) = (n − 1)!, S(n, n) = 1, for all integers n ≥ 1, andS(n + 1, k + 1) = nS(n, k + 1) + S(n, k) , with S(n, k) = 0 fork < 1 or k > n.

It is well-known that C(n, k) is divisible by n when n = p isprime and 0 < k < n. This is usually proved by looking atC(p, k) = p!/k!(p − k)!, and applying Gauss's Lemma fromelementary number theory that if a product rs of two integersis divisible by a prime p, then either r or s (or both) must bea multiple of p. However, it is also true that s(n, k) is divisi-ble by n when n = p is prime and 1 < k < n, and that S(n, k)is divisible by n when n = p is prime and 1 < k < n. For thesetwo kinds of Stirling numbers, there is no proof from ele-mentary number theory analogous to the proof that C(p, k) isdivisible by the prime p for all k with 0 < k < p. Instead, your

first problem is to find a purely com-binatorial proof idea of this divisibili-ty property that applies to C(n, k), tos(n, k) and to S(n, k). (The only factabout the prime p needed is the defin-ing property that p has no divisor d with 1 < d < p.)

Further divisibility properties about C(n, k) include the factthat for n = 2p, with p prime, C(2p, k) is divisible by p for0 < k < p and for p < k < 2p. Again, this is “obvious" fromC(n, k) = n!/k!(n − k)!; but no such simple argument fromelementary number theory explains why s(2p, k) is divisibleby prime p for all k with 1 < k < p and with p < k < 2p, norwhy S(2p, k) is divisible by prime p for all k with 1 < k < pand with p < k < 2p. Your second problem is to find a pure-ly combinatorial approach (using the same basic idea as inthe previous problem) that yields all three of these results.

Problem 3. For what values of j, 1 ≤ j < p, and k, withk < p + j, is T(p + j, k) divisible by the prime p, where T is(successively) either C or s or S? Here, you need use only therecursion relations for each of these numerical triangles, andthe fact that if both t and u are multiples of p, so too is everylinear combination at + bu with integers a and b.

Problem 4. Applying the previous results, how can you con-clude that C(14, 5), s(14, 5), and S(14, 5) are all simultaneous-ly divisibly by 7, by 11, and by 13, without doing actual cal-culations of their values?

GOLOMB’S PUZZLE COLUMN™

DIVISIBILITIES IN NUMERICAL TRIANGLESSolomon W. Golomb

IT Members Receive Prestigious Awards2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming MedalAwarded to Sergio Verdu, Professor at the Department ofElectrical Engineering of Princeton University, “For fundamentalcontributions to information theory and the development of multi-user detection.”

The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal was established by the IEEEBoard of Directors in 1986 “for exceptional contributions to informa-tion sciences, systems and technology.” For more information pleaserefer to http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/pr/hampr.html.

2008 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal

Awarded to Gerald Foschini, Bell Labs Fellow, WirelessCommunications Research Department, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, "For seminal contributions to the science and technology of

multiple-antenna wireless communications."

In 1976, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal was established bythe IEEE Board of Directors in commemoration of the centennial ofthe telephone's invention and to provide recognition for outstandingcontributions to telecommunications. For more information pleaserefer to http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/pr/bellpr.html.

2008 IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal

Awarded to Robert M. Gray, Lucent Technologies Professor ofEngineering at the Electrical Engineering Department of StanfordUniversity, "For contributions to vector quantization and signalcompression techniques."

The IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal was established by

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the IEEE Board of Directors in 1995 and may be presented 'foroutstanding achievements in signal processing.' The achievementmay be theoretical, technological or commercial. For more infor-mation please refer to http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/pr/kilbypr.html.

2007 IEEE IT/ComSoc Joint Paper Award

Awarded to Amin Shokrollahi, professor at the School of infor-matics and communications at the Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology in Lausanne, for his paper “Raptor Codes” publishedon IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 52, No. 6, pp.2551 - 2567, June 2006.

The following part of the nomination of this paper illustrates boththe theoretical and practical importance of these codes: “This

paper introduces the theory of Raptor codes, an invention whichhas found widespread use in the reliable delivery of data on pack-et-based communications networks. The codes presented in thispaper are the first (and only) class of fountain codes encodableand decodable in time linear in the size of the source. This makesthem natural candidates for transmission of data over unreliablecommunication networks. The use of techniques in this publica-tion have led directly to the mandatory coding standards in3GPP-MBMS which governs the reliable multicast/broadcastdelivery of data on 3G mobile devices, in DVB-H IPDatacastwhich governs the reliable delivery of data in the DVB-H body,and in various IP-TV standards.”

For more information please refer to http://www.comsoc.org/~awards/joint.html.

8


New IEEE Fellows as of January 2008Naofal Al Dhahir IT, COMM, SP COMM

For contributions to high data rate communications throughbroadband channels.

Alexander Barg IT IT

For contributions to coding theory.

Paul Ebert IT, COMM, CS, SP AES

For contributions to the standard international aircraft collisionavoidance system.

Bertrand Hochwald IT, COMM IT

For contributions to multiple-input-multiple-output wirelesscommunications.

Thomas Howell IT, MAG MAG

For contributions to signal processing for digital magnetic recording.

Christian Jutten IT, COMP, CAS, EMB SPSP, SMC, CIS

For contributions in source separation and independent compo-nent analysis.

Hamid Krim IT, SP, SMC SP

For contributions to statistical signal processing, multiscale analy-sis, estimation and detection, and image analysis.

Philippe Loubaton IT, SP SP

For contributions to blind channel identification in communica-tion systems.

Steven Low IT, COMP, COMM, CS, VT COMM

For contributions to internet congestion control.

Benoit Macq IT, COMP, EMB, SP SP

For contributions to visual communication technologies.

Muriel Medard IT, COMM, VT COMM

For contributions to wideband wireless fading channels and net-work coding.

Athina Petropulu IT, SP SP

For contributions to signal processing for communications, net-working and ultrasound imaging.

Amin Shokrollahi IT IT

For contributions to coding theory and practice.

Ananthram Swami IT, COMM, SP SP

For contributions to statistical signal processing in communica-tion systems and networks.

Paul Van den Hof IT, CS, SP CS

For contribution to system identification for control systems.

Xiaodong Wang IT, COMM, SP SP

For contributions to signal processing for wireless communications.

En-hui Yang IT, COMM, SP IT

For contributions to source coding.

Jinyun Zhang IT, LEO, AP, BT, BTCOMM,SP, VT, ITS

For contributions to broadband wireless transmission and net-working technology.

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9


Recently, the Board of Governors has provided their generoussupport and approved a proposal for establishing an AnnualSchool of Information Theory in North America. The rich tradi-tion of the European winter school has been an inspiration, and itseemed only natural to organize an event that would benefit thenext generation of information theorists to come.

The ‘school’ is planned as a student-oriented event in a campusenvironment. Participation is open to graduate students andpostdoctoral researchers working in information theory and relat-ed areas. Full and half-day lectures by senior instructors willallow the students to be exposed to the latest and greatest, a paneland a keynote lecture, as well as student talks and posters anddiscussion hours will facilitate further interaction between thestudents and as well as with invited senior attendees.

We are pleased to announce that the First Annual School ofInformation Theory will be held at the University Park Campus,Penn State University during June 1-5, 2008. University Park isthe main campus of Penn State in State College, PA, and is one thelargest college campuses in the US, serving in excess of 45,000 stu-dents. It is within driving distance of East Coast schools, and iseasily reachable via the University Park Airport.

The preparations for this exciting event are well underway. As ofthe time this note is being written, we have confirmed that Prof.David Tse of UC Berkeley will be offering a full-day course witha title that inspires all: "Information Theory of Wireless Networks:Breaking the Logjam".

We are also pleased to announce that there will be no registra-tion fee to attend the school. This is made possible by the gener-ous support of our society as well as other federal and centersupport we gathered. We will also be able to award (modest)travel grants.

If you are an advisor reading this note, we hope you will encour-age your students and postdocs to file their applications as soonas possible. If you are a student, we hope you are as fired upabout this great opportunity for you, as we are, and please turn toCall For Participation below to learn more about the details andhow to apply for the school. If you have any questions, do nothesitate to contact us: Aylin Yener ([email protected]) or GerhardKramer ([email protected]).

We look forward to seeing you in early June in State College!

The First Annual School of Information TheoryAylin Yener and Gerhard Kramer

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Background: Dr. Bykhovsky is the Director, Analysis ofElectromagnetic Compatibility, of the Radio Research andDevelopment Institute of the Russian Communications Ministry(Moscow). He authored some 245 scientific articles that span sev-eral areas from electromagnetism and propagation to radio sys-tems analysis and history aspects of science and technology. Latelast year, he published (in Russian), by Technosphera publishersin Moscow, a book entitled “Pioneers of the Information Century”that was the subject of Anthony Ephremides’ Historian’s column inthe previous issue of this newsletter.

This article is a memorial for a great scientist who, thanks to theauthor's initiative, can now be better understood and appreciatedby our readers (especially since his career flourished during a dif-ficult era for independent scientists in the Soviet Union.)

The greatest mystery of life is hidden in the fact that the satisfaction isonly obtained by the one who is giving and sacrificing and not thedemanding and consuming one. And any creativity is love and any loveis creativity.

N. Berdyaev

Introduction. In the twentieth century, the development of elec-tronic equipment technology was based on semiconductors andintegrated circuits. The new technology made possible the imple-mentation of more and more complex signal processing algo-rithms, which had a profound impact on the development oftelecommunications. The improvement of telecommunicationstechnology was also enabled by the development of the theory ofoptimal systems, pioneered by C. Shannon, N. Wiener, D.Middleton, A. Kolmogorov and V. Kotelnikov.

R. L. Dobrushin was a great mathematician who worked on fun-damental problems in information theory. He conducted first-class research that led to rigorous proofs of the main theorems ininformation theory. He was also an excellent teacher.

Biography. Roland Lvovich Dobrushin was born on July 20, 1929in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His father came from a Jewishfamily, and worked in Leningrad port as an engineer. His mothercame from a German Protestant family.

During his very first school years, Dobrushin showed remarkableskill in mathematics. In the eighth grade, one of his friendsdragged him to a city math tournament. Dobrushin solved all thegiven problems and won the first prize. After that, he began tostudy mathematics diligently. In 1947, after finishing high school,he entered Moscow State University, from which he graduated in1952 with a major in mechanics and mathematics. Starting in hisfreshman year, he attended lectures in probability theory by thewell-known Russian mathematician E. B. Dynkin. The theoryformed the basis for his research for years to come.

During his senior years at university, Dobrushin studied under the

direction of A. Kolmogorov, and conducted independent researchin the area of Markov random processes. He showed exceptionalabilities and, thanks to Kolmogorov’s authority and support, hewas accepted to the equivalent of a master’s program immediate-ly after he received his undergraduate degree. This was not at alleasy, since the Fifties were years of state-supported antisemitism,and Jews were generally not even admitted to universities.

In 1955, Dobrushin defended his thesis on Local Limit Theorem forMarkov Chains. He became an Assistant Professor at theDepartment of Probability Theory (headed by Kolmogorov),where he worked until 1967. At the university, he conducted a sci-entific seminar on statistical physics – one of the many areas of hisscientific interest. He continued to actively work in this area allhis life, and achieved a number of significant results.

In the mid-50s, Kolmogorov began information theory research atMoscow State University. Dobrushin was involved in thisresearch work, and in 1961 defended his State Doctor Dissertationon Information Theory and Coding.

Dobrushin was an excellent research leader. At the Institute forInformation Transmission Problems (IITP) of the USSR Academyof Sciences, of which he became the head in 1967, he assembled acreative team of remarkable mathematicians whose works werewell known all over the world.

For many years, Dobrushin was the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of thejournal Problems in Information Transmission, effectively assumingthe role of its Editor. Under his leadership, the journal becameknown worldwide. He wrote many articles in a five-volumeMathematical Encyclopedia (Moscow, 1977-1985). He was a memberof editorial boards of many foreign journals on probability theoryand statistical physics.

Dobrushin’s scientific merits were recognized widely abroad. Hewas a member of the Moscow Mathematical Society, theInternational Association of Mathematical Physics, and theAcademia Europaea, and was a Foreign Member of the NationalAcademy of Sciences of the USA. Unfortunately, he was not wellenough recognized in the official circles of his own country.

The IITP laboratory became a mecca for scientists coming from allover the world. Such visits facilitated a regular exchange of ideasamong scientists separated by the “iron curtain.” To the displeas-ure of those in power, these contacts were not just mathematical;Dobrushin was constantly helping dissidents.

Nevertheless, there was one aspect of Dobrushin’s professionallife that was totally controlled by the government: election to theUSSR Academy of Sciences. He did not have the slightest chanceto be elected by the conservative mathematical section of theAcademy, due to both his reputation as a dissident and also hisnon-Russian origin.

Roland L. Dobrushin – A Scientist and a Citizen

Mark Bykhovsky, [email protected]

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Another aspect of his life that was also controlled by the state washis ability to travel abroad. Due to his extraordinary popularity,both professional and personal, Dobrushin received many invita-tions and awards. In 1982 he was elected as an Honorary Memberof the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, but he was notallowed to attend the ceremony. Until 1988, even during the era of“perestroika and glasnost” (“freedom of speech”) he never gotpermission to visit western countries. He was able to do so onlyafter Gorbachev’s intervention.

Roland L. Dobrushin died in Moscow on November 12th, 1995.Scientific works co-authored by his students and colleagues con-tinued to be published for four years after his death. After hisdeath, obituaries were published in a number of domestic andforeign journals. The English newspaper Independent wrote onNovember 29th, 1995 by Yu. Sukhov: “Dobrushin will be remem-bered not only as an outstanding mathematician, but also as anextraordinary person.”

The scientist. Dobrushin’s scientific work can be divided intothree periods. During the first five years after his graduation fromMoscow State University (1952-1957), he did research on Markovrandom processes, which was the basis of his Candidate ofScience Dissertation (Ph.D. thesis). From 1958 to 1963, the mainarea of his scientific interest was information theory. After 1964,he did research mainly on problems in statistical physics. Duringthis time, he kept doing research on problems of communicationnetworks by applying ideas and methods from statistical physics.

C. Shannon’s main information theory results appeared in 1948.Unfortunately, at the time, information theory ideas were deemedto be harmful for a Soviet person, and were rejected by domesticscientist-philosophers as not conforming to Marxist-Leninist doc-trine, which of course substantially slowed down the develop-ment of information theory in the USSR. Outstanding domesticscientists such as A. N. Kolmogorov, A. Y. Khinchin, A. I. Berg,and A. A. Kharkevich fully and clearly recognized how deep andpromising were these new “Western” ideas. After Stalin’s death,this ideological pressure weakened somewhat. In the middle of

the Fifties, research in the field of telecommunication theorybegan to expand in the USSR, and translations of the papers ofShannon and other foreign scientists became available.

A. N. Kolmogorov was likely the first to appreciate the profoundcharacter and significance of information theory. Kolmogorov andKhinchin began to publish important mathematical works on infor-mation theory. Kolmogorov engaged his students, R. L. Dobrushinand M. S. Pinsker, in conducting research in this field. Soon, thesescientists made important contributions to information theory.

According to Kolmogorov, the coding theorems established byShannon exhibited an amazing mathematical intuition, but werenot rigorously proven. Besides, in practice there are various typesof communications channels which were not discussed inShannon’s works, such as channels with random parameters,channels with synchronization errors, channels (and signals) withunknown statistical characteristics, and multi-user channels.

Information theory turned out to be an attractive field of work formany mathematicians, such as Dobrushin, who began activelyworking on these problems. At first, Dobrushin focused on deriv-ing under what general conditions Shannon’s theorems hold. In1959, he introduced a new and very important notion of informa-tion stability. He showed that information stability is a sufficientcondition to prove Shannon’s coding theorem. Dobrushin alsogave important generalizations of Shannon’s theorem for caseswhere the statistical characteristics of the communication channeland/or the source are only partially known. He conducted impor-tant research on channels with synchronization errors, where heintroduced the notion of “conductive capacity,” and in 1967proved a coding theorem for such channels. In 1968, with N. D.Vvedenskaya, he worked on channels with deletions and pro-posed approximate methods for computing their capacity.

Together with Y. I. Khurgin and B. S. Tsybakov he conductedresearch on the capacity of multipath channels with fading.Together with M. S. Pinsker, he gave a simpler proof of Wolfowitz’result that the capacity of a channel with memory is always atleast as large as the capacity of the corresponding channel with-out memory.

Dobrushin produced a number of important results related toerror exponents for various discrete memoryless channels, suchas binary symmetric channels, erasure channels, and channelswith feedback. He also worked on low-complexity decoding algo-rithms. In 1961, J. M. Wozencraft and B. Reiffen proposed asequential decoding algorithm, and claimed that it substantiallydecreases the decoding complexity. Dobrushin studied this algo-rithm, and showed that actually the complexity of sequentialdecoding increases exponentially with the transmission duration.In 1972 and 1973, together with S. I. Gelfand and M. S. Pinsker,Dobrushin proved the existence of “good” codes that meet theVarshamov-Gilbert bound and whose complexity of encodingincreases linearly with the block length. From 1976, Dobrushinstarted working on communication network problems.Dobrushin applied methods and approaches of statistical physicsto the solutions of multiterminal problems.

Dobrushin was not only an outstanding and gifted scientist, butalso an educator who had a great influence over the developmentof research in the field of telecommunications theory in the USSR,constantly paying attention to popularization and dissemination

Roland L. Dobrushin

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of information theory ideas, and strengthening and widening con-nections between domestic and foreign scientists. He was an ini-tiator and an editor of the translation of many books on telecom-munications into Russian. These books played a significant role inthe education of domestic scientists and engineers. In 1962, he(together with O. B. Lupanov) edited a book called Works on infor-mation theory and cybernetics, which included all of Shannon’s pub-lished works, as well as a preface by Kolmogorov. Under his edi-torship, the following notable American books were translatedinto Russian: Random Signals and Noise, by Davenport and Root(1960); Transmission of Information, by Fano (1965); and Principles ofCommunication Engineering, by Wozencraft and Jacobs (1969).

The citizen. The value of a person is defined not only by hisintellect, but also by his moral character traits. R. L. Dobrushinwas an innately free person whose thinking was not dependenton restrictions imposed by authorities or social prejudices, orby stereotyped limitations and habits. He was a person whostrictly adhered to very high ethical standards. He respected aman’s freedom, and could not stand still when this freedomwas challenged by the state, thus destroying creativity. This iswhy he supported the free-spirited students of Moscow StateUniversity, and why he was among those who were boldenough to express their indignation against dissident persecu-tion in the USSR.

A patriot and democrat by conviction, Dobrushin participated inthe powerful rise of the democratic movement that emerged inthe USSR Academy of Sciences in the end of the 80s. Togetherwith others, he actively engaged in this movement, believing thathis country needed immediate changes in its internal and externalpolicies to make its citizens free and to promote progress in sci-ence and in all other areas of life.

Articles devoted to the life and mathematicalwork of R.L.Dobrushin:1. L. A. Bassalygo, V. A. Malyshev, R. A. Minlos, I. A. Ovseevich,

E. A. Pechersky, M. S. Pinsker, V. V. Prelov, A. N. Rybko, Yu. M.Suhov, S. B. Shlosman, In Memory of Roland Lvovich Dobrushin,Problems of Information Transmission 32, 1996, number 3,223–238.

2. B. M. Gurevich, I. A. Ibragimov, R. A. Minlos, I. A. Ovseevich,V. I. Oseledec, M. S. Pinsker, V. V. Prelov, Yu. V. Prohorov, Ya. G.Sinai, A. N. Shiryaev, A. S. Holevo, Roland L. Dobrushin, TheoryProbab. Appl. 41, 1996, number 1, 132—136.

3. A. Jaffe, J. Lebowitz, Ya Sinai, Roland L. Dobrushin,Communications in Mathematical Physics 189, 1997, number 2,259-261.

4. V. A. Malyshev, R. A. Minlos, Roland Lvovich Dobrushin(1929–1995), Markov Process. Related Fields 1, 1995, number 4,447–458.

5. V.V. Prelov, Information theory in the scientific work of R. L.Dobrushin, Russian Math. Surveys 52, 1997, number 2, 245—249.

6. V.V. Prelov, Theory of Information in the Institute for Problems ofInformation Transmission, Radiotekhnika, 1999, number 12.

7. R. Minlos, E. Pechersky, and Yu. Suhov, Remarks on the life andresearch of Roland L. Dobrushin, Jour. Appl. Math. and StochasticAnal. 9, 1996, 337–372.

8. R. Minlos, S. Shlosman, Ya. Sinai, Obituary: Roland L. Dobrushin(1929–1995), Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 16, 1996, number5, 863–869.

9. R. A. Minlos, Senya Shlosman, Yu. M. Suhov, On Dobrushin'sway. From probability theory to statistical physics, AMS,Providence RI (2000), ISBN 0821821504.

10. R. Minlos, S. Shlosman, N. Vvedenskaya, Memories of RolandDobrushin, Notices of the American Mathematical Society 43,1996, 428–429.

11. R. L. Dobrushin, To 70th Birthday, Editorial URSS, Moscow 1999(in Russian), 104p. Some parts reprinted in [9].

The list of publications of R.L. Dobrushin is available athttp://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/dobrushin/list.html. Many paperscan be downloaded from this site.

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The two-day International Symposium was organized by theSelmer Center which is the research center in cryptology and codingtheory at the University of Bergen (http://www.selmer.uib.no/).The center was opened February 11, 2003, and named in honor ofErnst S. Selmer (1920-2006) who was a Professor at the University ofBergen 1957-1990 and a pioneer in several areas of mathematics,including the field of linear shift registers.

Tor Helleseth is a Member of the IEEE Information TheorySociety since 1989 and Senior Member since 1996. In 1997, hewas elected an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to coding the-ory and cryptography. He received the Cand. Real. and Dr.Philos. Degrees in mathematics from the University of Bergen,Bergen, Norway, in 1971 and 1979, respectively. From 1973 to1980, he was a Research Assistant at the Department ofMathematics, University of Bergen. From 1981 to 1984, he wasat the Chief Headquarters of Defense in Norway. Since 1984, hehas been a Professor in the Department of Informatics at the

University of Bergen. During the academic years 1977-1978 and1992-1993, he was on sabbatical leave at the University ofSouthern California, Los Angeles, and during 1979-1980, he wasa Research Fellow at the Eindhoven University of Technology,Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Tor Helleseth served as anAssociate Editor for Coding Theory for IEEE Transactions onInformation Theory from 1991 to 1993. He was a ProgramChairman for Eurocrypt'93 and for the Information TheoryWorkshop in 1997 in Longyearbyen, Norway. He was also aProgram Co-Chairman for all conferences on Sequences andTheir Applications (SETA). His research interests includesequence design for wireless communications, coding theoryand cryptology.

The symposium combined invited talks in various topics lying inthe area of scientific interests of Tor. These were presented by thewell-known experts in the relevant fields. The program andabstracts of the talks can be found at http://www.ii.uib.no/~riera/conference/Program.html.

Solomon Golomb gave a lecture on his "Last Theorem", GuangGong and Thomas Johansson presented recent results on thedesign and cryptanalysis of stream ciphers. Pascale Charpin,Claude Carlet and Alexander Pott discussed the hot problems onhyper bent and Almost Perfect Nonlinear (APN) functions. Talksby Jim Massey, P. Vijay Kumar, Kyeongcheol Yang and AlexanderKholosha were on sequence generation and cross correlation.Victor Zinoviev described the efforts towards computing someparticular Weil exponential sums. Øyvind Ytrehus, Patrick Sole,Tom Höholdt and Stefan Dodunekov presented some problems inthe coding theory and their solutions. Torleiv Klöve discussedpermutation arrays and Henk Van Tilborg talked about graph-theoretic problems. Hong-Yeop Song presented variation of theDiffie-Hellman protocol.

All the participants are looking forward now to the next editionof the Helleseth Symposium tentatively scheduled for the fall of2012.

Workshop Report: International Symposium on theOccasion of the 60th Anniversary of Tor Helleseth November 21-22, 2007, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Alexander Kholosh and Øyvind Ytrehus

Tor Helleseth

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Amendments to the IT Constitution and Bylaws S.W. McLaughlin and D.L. Neuhoff

As you may be aware, the Information Theory Society has aConstitution and a set of Bylaws governing various aspects ofits operation. From time to time, the Board of Governors (BoG)amends these. The purpose of this article is to publicizeamendments approved by the BoG at its meetings in Sept. 2006,March 2007 and Sept. 2007. The amendments to the Bylawshave already taken effect. According to our rules, the amend-ments to the Constitution will take effect 60 days after thisnotice of amendments, unless at least 1% of the voting mem-bers of the Society object, in writing, within 60 days, to theIEEE Office of Society General Activities. If such objections arereceived, there will be a mail ballot of IT Society members onthe amendment(s), requiring two-thirds majority for approval.

The Constitution and Bylaws and the recent amendmentscan be found on the IT Society website at http://www.itsoc.org/society/html. A summary of the amendmentsfollows.

Most of the changes have come in response to a request by theIEEE that all Societies update their constitutions and bylaws toconform to certain standards. These include amendments toArticle VII (Meetings) of the IT Constitution approved March2007 to

(a) increase the specification of a BoG quorum from one-thirdto one-half (Sec. 4),

(b) reword the statement that a majority is required for an itemto be approved by the BoG (Sec. 5),

(c) specify that the BoG may meet by teleconference and thelike (Sec. 6),

(d) reword the statement that the BoG may vote by email andthe like (Sec. 7),

(e) specify that BoG members holding multiple positions arelimited to one vote (Sec. 8), and

(f) specify that proxy voting is not permitted (Sec. 9).

Another amendment to the Constitution, initiated by the ITConstitution and Bylaws Committee and approved by the BoGin Sept. 2007,

(g) clarifies the statement that the BoG consists of elected mem-bers and statutory members prescribed by the Constitution,

as well as those prescribed by the Bylaws, and that suchstatutory members may be designated to have votingrights. (Art. V (Governance), Sec. 1)

Amendments to the IT Bylaws include those stimulated by theIEEE to

(h) change the name of the Nominations Committee toNominations and Appointments Committee, and expand itsmembership to include three elected by the BoG, in addi-tion to the two past Presidents (Art. V, Sec. 2, Mar. 2007),and

(i) modify the rules regarding nominations to the BoG by peti-tion from IT Society members (Art. IV, Sec. 1, Sept. 2007),

as well as additional amendments, initiated by the ITConstitution and Bylaws Committee, to

(j) add the Chapter Award to the Bylaws (Art. X, Sept. 2006),

(k) incorporate the name change of the Distinguished ServiceAward to the Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award(Art. V, Sec. 9, and Art. IX, Sept. 2006),

(l) add the newly formed Conference Committee as a standingcommittee (Art. V, Sec. 10, Mar. 2007),

(m) change “subcommittee” to “committee” throughout (Mar.2007),

(n) clarify the wording that the President may vote only if thevote would affect the outcome (Art. III, Sec. 3, Sept. 2007),

(o) eliminate references to IEEE awards that no longer exist(Art. V., Sec. 7, Sept. 2007), and

(p) designate the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions onInformation Theory as a voting member of BoG (Art. V, Sec.7, Sept. 2007).

The IT Constitution and Bylaws Committee, which for 2008consists of past presidents B. Rimoldi and D. Neuhoff (chair),welcomes comments and suggestions. If you wish to object toany of the amendments to the Constitution, send your objec-tions in writing to Society General Activities, IEEE TechnicalActivities, 445 Hoes Lane, PO Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331.

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2008 IEEE Information Theory Society Aaron D.Wyner Distinguished Service Award

The IT Society Aaron D. Wyner Award honors individuals whohave shown outstanding leadership in, and provided long stand-ing exceptional service to, the Information Theory community.This award was formerly known as the IT Society DistinguishedService Award.

Nominations for the Award can be submitted by anyone. Theindividual or individuals making the nomination have the pri-mary responsibility for justifying why the nominee shouldreceive this award.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE: Letters of nomination should - Identify the nominee's areas of leadership and exceptional serv-

ice, detailing the activities for which the nominee is believed todeserve this award;

- Include the nominee's current vita;- Include two letters of endorsement.

Current officers and members of the IT Society Board ofGovernors are ineligible.

Please send all nominations by April 15, 2008 to Bixio Rimoldi, [email protected].

IEEE Awards

The IEEE Awards program has paid tribute to technical profes-sionals whose exceptional achievements and outstanding contri-butions have made a lasting impact on technology, society and theengineering profession.

Institute Awards presented by the IEEE Board of Directors fallinto several categories:

Medal of Honor (Deadline: July 1)

Medals (Deadline: July 1)

Corporate Recognitions (Deadline: July 1)

Service Awards (Deadline: July 1)

Prize Papers (Deadline: July 1)

The Awards program honors achievements in education, industry,research and service. Each award has a unique mission and crite-ria, and offers the opportunity to honor distinguished colleagues,inspiring teachers and corporate leaders. The annual IEEE AwardsBooklet, distributed at the Honors Ceremony, highlights theaccomplishments of each year's IEEE Award and Medal recipients.

For more detailed information on the Awards program, and fornomination procedure, please refer to http://www.ieee.org/por-tal/pages/about/awards/index.html.

Call for Nominations

ArXiv Progress ReportJoachim Rosenthal and Madhu Sudan (moderators for math.IT/cs.IT)

For three years the IT Society has been encouraging its members tomake use of the free arXiv preprint server at <http://arxiv.org>.The increase in usage has been quite remarkable, as the followingtable of total number of submissions to cs.IT = math.IT indicates:

2003: 342004: 672005: 3812006: 4312007: 695

In fact, IT has been the fastest-growing subject area in arXiv duringthis time.

Since the last update in the June 2006 Newsletter, several improve-ments have been implemented. The major ones are:

1) The information theory category cs.IT is now aliased in themathematics section as math.IT.

2) ArXiv now supports PDFLaTeX. TeX submissions may nowinclude PDF, JPG, or PNG figures.

3) The article identifier system has been updated, for more consis-tent citations and linking.

In addition to the main server at <http://arxiv.org>, users mayfind the newly redesigned arXiv front end at UC Davis to be veryuser-friendly: <http://front.math.ucdavis.edu>.

Finally, it is possible to subscribe to a daily summary of new sub-missions via email; see <http://arxiv.org/help/subscribe> forinstructions.

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GOLOMB’S PUZZLE COLUMN™

Pentomino Exclusion SolutionsSolomon W. Golomb

Shortest Pentomino Games on n x n boards

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Guest Column: News from the National Science Foundation

Sirin Tekinay, Program Director for the Communications Program, and Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation Program

Dear reader,

This is the tenth quarterly guest column in this series. I’mthrilled to see this space exceedingly serve its purpose ofenabling our interaction on all that impact us as professionals inthe communications community as I write about relevant NSFprograms and news.

New and Upcoming Solicitations

At the time of writing, we are handling 1342 preliminary propos-als submitted to the NSF-wide Cyber-Enabled Discovery andInnovation (CDI) [1] program. Many of you have volunteered to,and will, serve on review panels to evaluate proposals with com-ponents in our fields. Thank you so very much, all of you whohave submitted proposals and participated in the review processin the first cycle of this exciting new program. CDI is unique with-in the NSF, poised to support truly multi- (and hopefully trans-)disciplinary research that is potentially transformative.

We trust that the review process we over-engineered at set up willaddress the challenges of such substantial submission volume.We are working against a very tight deadline to review the pre-liminary proposals at multi-disciplinary panels so that we cansend invitations for full proposals as soon as possible, as the latterare due on April 29.

The next cycle of CDI, hopefully with an increased budget, is com-ing around: Letters of Intent are due in September for the 2009.

News on Communications Research

The CAREER 2008 competition in Communications Foundationswas recently concluded. There were fewer submissions this yearthan the last two years. Out of twenty proposals, five receivedawards. Making CAREER awards is a grueling job: givenincreased resources, many more than the awarded ones would befine to put taxpayers’ money to work in. This is also one of themost exciting parts of the job, to have a launching, or fueling,impact on junior colleagues’ professional lives.

I could not be more proud that on November 1 2007, Dr. J.Nicholas Laneman was named among the twenty CAREERawardees by the NSF as the recipient of a Presidential EarlyCareer Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE). Nick wasone of the six CAREER awardees of the Communications Programin 2006; my first set of CAREER awards! The PECASE award is anadditional honor, in fact the highest one bestowed by the U.S.government on scientists and engineers beginning their careers.

The Theoretical Foundations 2008 Program Solicitation was post-ed after a lengthy clearance process [2] on December 15, 2007. Thedeadline for proposal submission to TF08 is March 19, 2008 withthe submission window opening a week prior to the deadline. TheCommunications Research subsection reads:

“This program element seeks advances in theory and techniquesfor the secure and efficient representation, transmission andreception of digital and analog information over a variety of chan-nels (e.g., wired line, mobile multi-antenna wireless, optical, andbiological channels). Research and education contributions to a)theory, b) algorithms, and c) applications based on new theoreti-cal foundations are sought.

a. Contributions in theory include those in: communication theo-ry, information theory, and theoretical studies of mobility andtraffic. An area of interest is modeling and analysis of the capac-ity and performance of communication systems, where non-traditional noise models for a variety of channels continue toplay a crucial role. Network information theory, network cod-ing, multi-user coding, source and channel coding are also ofinterest. Research in multi-user communications is encouraged.In particular, investigations into modulation and coding tech-niques that exploit the time, frequency and spatial dimensionsof channels and MIMO channels are of interest.

b. Research promoting advances in algorithms, for example, thosethat work across network layers such as multicast, broadcast,and geocast algorithms, is encouraged.

c. Applications based on new theoretical foundations, or new the-ory prompted by new applications are sought. Applicationsinclude those involving multi-sensory input, cooperative com-munications, and, in general, applications of communicationand information theory in sensor systems.

Fundamental research efforts should aim at re-defining the refer-ence framework for communications, in addition to cross layerresearch. “

The other sections in the solicitation are closely related toCommunications Research: Numeric, Symbolic and GeometricComputing, Signal Processing Systems, Scientific Foundations forInternet’s Next Generation (SING), and Theory of Computing. Asusual, activities cutting across these program elements in theTheoretical Foundations cluster are encouraged and will be supported.

NSF People

In every column, I introduce some of the people I work with; whoembody the culture and spirit of NSF. This time, I would like tointroduce Dr. Richard Beigel [3], the new program director forTheory of Computing. Richard replaced Dr. William Steiger. Billwas with the Theoretical Foundation Cluster until September 2007and left his program to Richard with a smooth handoff throughthe CAREER panels.

Richard comes to us from Temple University where he is a fullprofessor in the department of Computer and InformationScience. Before Temple, Richard was a teacher and researcher incomputer science since 1986 at the Johns Hopkins University, Yale

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University, Lehigh University, the University of Illinois atChicago, Rutgers DIMACS, NEC Research Inc. Richard studiedmathematics and computer science at Stanford University, wherehe received his BS, MS, and PhD. His research interests includecomputational genomics, visual data mining, molecular comput-ing, fault diagnosis, complexity theory, circuits, algorithms,bounded queries, and the mathematical theory of computation.

The “Social Scene”

CISE has been buzzing with CDI, Expeditions in Computing [4],in addition to the upcoming deadlines for the many ongoing butupdated programs such as NetSE , IIS, and TF… One way of deal-ing with the proposals and the rigorous review process is for pro-gram officers to get together for dinner once a week to swap wartales. With the increased cross-disciplinary activity, larger groupsof us have been working closer than ever on the review process.

On a Personal Note

I can’t believe it’s almost halfway into my third year at the NSF.Before I joined, I was sure I would stay for two years, whichseems to be the nominal time committed to our program by mypredecessors. However, thanks to the new programs I serve asthe coordinator for, I have had to ask for permission for anotheryear from NJIT, my home institution. The Interagency Personnel

Agreement (IPA) that I am under allows for this temporary “bor-rowing” arrangement for up to four years. At this point, my planis to return to NJIT in September, so I hope you consider joiningthe NSF. I will of course keep you posted on the official openingof my position.

… Till next time, dream big, and keep in touch!

Sirin TekinayProgram Director, Communications Foundations

National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Blvd

Arlington VA 22230USA

[email protected] http://www.nsf.gov/staff/staff_bio.jsp?lan=stekinay&org=CCF&

from=staff

REFERENCES:

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/cdi/

[2] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08518/nsf08518.htm

[3] http://www.cis.temple.edu/~beigel/long.html

[4] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07592/nsf07592.htm

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DATE CONFERENCE LOCATION CONTACT/INFORMATION DUE DATE

March 31 – April 4, 6th International Symposium on Berlin, Germany http://wiopt.org October 15, 20072008 Modeling and Optimization in

Mobile, Ad-Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt’08)

April 13 – 18, 2008 IEEE Conference on Computer Phoenix, AZ, USA http://www.ieee-infocom.org/ June 25, 20072008 Communications (INFOCOM 2008)

May 5-9, 2008 2008 IEEE Information Theory Porto, Portugal http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/itw2008/ November 15, 2007Workshop (ITW 2008)

May 19 – 23, 2008 IEEE International Conference Beijing, China http://www.ieee-icc.org/2008/ September 28, 20072008 on Communications (ICC 2008)

May 20-23, 2008 2008 IEEE Communication Theory Sedona, AZ, USA http://www.ieee-ctw.org/ __Workshop (CTW 2008)

June 24 – 26, 2008 24th Biennial Symposium on Ontario, Canada http://www.ece.queensu.ca/ February 15, 2008Communications symposium/

July 2–11, 2008 2008 Soria Summer School on Soria Spain http://www.ma.uva.es/~s3cm/ ---Computational Mathematics:"Algebraic Coding Theory"

July 6 – 11, 2008 2008 IEEE International Symposium Toronto, Canada http://www.isit2008.org January 7, 2008on Information Theory (ISIT 2008)

July 6–9, 2008 IEEE International Workshop on Recife, Brazil http://spawc2008.org/ February 11, 2008Signal Processing Advances for Wireless Communications (SPAWC 2008)

July 14 - 15, 2008 2008 Information Theory and Las Vegas, Nevada http://www.bio-complexity.com Feb. 25, 2008Statistical Learning (ITSL 2008) /ITSL/ITSL_index.html

September 1 – 5, 2008 International Symposium on Lausanne, Switzerland http://www.turbo-coding-2008.org/ March 27, 20082008 Turbo Codes and Related Topics

Sept. 15–19, 2008 2008 International Castle Meeting on Valladolid, Spain http://wmatem.eis.uva.es/2icmcta/ May 15, 2008Coding Theory and Applications (ICMCTA 2008)

Sept. 24–26, 2008 The Annual Allerton Conference on Monticello, IL, USA http://www.comm.csl.uiuc.edu July 1, 2008Communication, Control and /allerton/Computing (Allerton 2008)

Dec. 7 - 10, 2008 2008 International Symposium on Auckland, New Zealand www.sita.gr.jp/ISITA2008/ May 7, 2008Information Theory and its Applications (ISITA 2008)

Conference Calendar

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